1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of formatting a phase-change optical disk and a phase-change optical disk formatted by the method.
2. Discussion of Background
It is easy to mass-produce formatted magneto-optical disks since a magneto-optical disk drive for the magneto-optical disks is such constructed that a defective sector in each disk is identified by the drive in the course of formatting the disk, and is registered in a primary defect list, called PDL, on the disk, and the defective sector is subjected to defect management.
However, in the case of a phase-change optical disk drive, the drive itself is not constructed in such a way that the defective sector in each disk is identified in the course of formatting thereof and subjected to defect management, but is constructed in such a way that the defect management is conducted when errors such as a recovered error, a read error and a write error are caused in the application for driving the phase-change optical disk, so that it is more difficult to mass-produce formatted phase-change optical disks than formatted magneto-optical disks. Furthermore, with respect to the phase-change optical disks, the process of subjecting the above errors to defect management, which is an only method that can be adopted, the conditions therefor, and the specific method for conducting the defect management entirely depend upon the application, so that it is difficult to mass-produce formatted phase-change optical recording media corresponding to a plurality of applications.
Furthermore, the thus formatted disks are not always subjected to recording or reproduction, using a drive produced by the same manufacturer as that of the formatted disks, so that when a disk formatted by a drive with a higher recording power is subjected to overwriting by another drive with a lower recording power, the recording quality of the disk is impaired due to the effects of imperfect erasing thereof and other effects, and a problem may occur that recorded data cannot be reproduced. Furthermore, another problem may occur that recorded signal or jitter is not stabilized before recording is conducted a plurality of times.